My Refuge

On Friday afternoon, I was lucky enough to be invited to the dedication of a lovely meditation space in downtown Asheville, the WriteMind Institute.  And even more lucky to have a mother-in-law in town and an infant feeding schedule that allowed me to attend.

It felt pretty darned great to take a shower, put on real clothes, and actually pick Jake up from daycare, from which I have officially been banished until the end of flu season, still a week hence.  I made an exception on Friday, feeling somehow loose and free by dint of my very ability to walk out of the house for two hours without my baby.

This is not something first-time mothers should try, by the way.  I don’t think Jake was ever more than fifty feet from me until that time we were visiting Mike’s mother when he was four months old, and three adults physically pushed me out of the house to take a walk without him.  He was crying when I got back, which pretty much convinced me I couldn’t leave him again for another four or five months at least.

But now I’m sane and balanced and the mother of an inevitably neglected second child (have I mentioned that I’m a second child?) so off I traipsed to the petri dish of Jake’s daycare and off he and I sped downtown for an outing that brought back guiltily pleasurable memories of what it was like to have only one child.  Manageable is the word I think I’m looking for.

The meditation space was absolutely beautiful, with a peaceful pull that reminded me of how long it’s been since I’ve practiced any form of yoga.  (That would be 24 days, since the day before Lily was born.)  The head of the WriteMind Institute, Jonathon Flaum, gathered us around to talk about the space and how welcome we all were there.  He invited us to sit in silence for five glorious minutes — during which Mike and Jake wandered the street outside, far enough away so that our silence would not be broken by a small child yelling “NOOOOO!” as is frequently Jake’s wont these days.

And then Jonathon talked about refuge.  He told some beautiful stories, and what it boiled down to was this:  Refuge as he defined it is a place where no one asks anything of you other than that you be yourself.

This idea traveled straight to my heart, already steeped in the easiest five minutes of meditation I’d ever experienced and the warm energy of a room full of people who shared the love and excitement of this new space.  A place where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.

And in that moment, I felt as if I knew myself, in a clear and simple way that I hadn’t for a very, very long time.  In one telescoped moment, I remembered how long it took me to find that self and how I had lost her in that first year of motherhood, and I experienced a pleasurable jolt of wisdom in recognizing that the birth of my second child — far from tossing me back down the rabbit hole of lost mindfulness I had expected — has brought me more strongly to that self.

A self I can be in places of refuge.  Where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.

Defining Your Own Refuge

After talking about the refuge he wanted to create, Jonathon invited us all to pass around a beautiful stone, to hold it and either think silently or express to those around us our own refuge, and then to ring the meditation bell before passing the stone on to the next person in the circle.

Immediately, Jake sprung to my mind.  The moments of postpartum anxiety when I could do nothing more than hold him against me as ballast against the battering of a panic attack.  The pure joy of seeing joy on my child’s face and knowing that I can — so far at least — provide him with a world in which that joy is possible.  The certainty that I am a good mother, and that being a mother is really part of who I am in a way few other undertakings have so naturally and unself-consciously been.

Jake, Mike, and I sat about three quarters of the way around the circle, so by the time the stone was passed to me, at least ten other people had described their refuge as their families.  And yet I didn’t care if I was being unoriginal.  I didn’t feel the need to prove my writerly acumen by thinking of something clever and different and thought-provoking.

Instead, I examined again what it was about Jake that was a refuge to me.  And I saw this whole family I’ve created.  Truly created, with grit and desire and faith and trust.  Finding Mike in a yoga class.  Trusting him and the easy feeling I had with him from the start.  Working through the things that couples work through when the first whispers of a new love slide away and the real issues of starting a life together reveal themselves.  Believing in myself and my body through the pre-Jake miscarriages, carrying myself through to the place where his pregnancy began.  Finding my way through the confusion of trying to be the mother I thought I should be to him until I emerged more mindful, more joyful, and more in love with my child than I thought I could be.  And, now, welcoming Lily into the fold without feeling the need to compensate for her second-child status, or for my own, not telling myself I should sacrifice as much of my self and sanity for her as I did for Jake, finding a strength and a sureness in holding onto my self as I mother her.

Mostly, though, I saw how I have finally found a place where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.  And so I cried a little bit as I stood up and told this group of friendly strangers that my refuge is the family I have created, with its newest member just three weeks old.

Jake helped me ring the bell — with a great relish that shook off any of the fear or embarrassment our minds throw up when we’ve said something sentimental in front of a group of people.  And as its peal still vibrated in the air and Jake returned to ring it again with Mike (“Asheville is my refuge,” he said with firmness and truth), I sat down and saw in a flash the other families I’ve created for myself:

The best friends past and present, particularly apt as my spirit sister Kali is on a plane on her way to spend the week with me even as I write.

My beautiful first child — four-legged, velvet eared Roxanne, the very meaning of unconditional love, whom I still feel curled up inside my heart.

The yoga buddies and play date parents and online confidantes who have carried me through the ebbs and flows of mindfulness that make me human and more than a little bit crazy at times and increasingly (I hope) peaceful.

And, sitting on that meditation mat, in a cooly lit, warmly occupied meditation space, I had a long, deep, satisfying moment of seeing just where I have allowed myself to be carried.

Having Your Moment

It’s not possible, of course, to be constantly conscious of where you have allowed yourself to be carried, nor, I would hazard, would it be particularly healthy if you could.  Become too enamored of what you have created for yourself and you can tip into the world of the ego, where it seems more important to gaze upon what you have than to simply experience it, let it go, and see where the Universe takes you next.

Yoga offers us a chance to experience the appreciation of where we are in the moment without examining it, to trust it so much that we don’t feel the need to hold onto it with a resolve that tips us into the false belief that we can keep life from changing around us.

For me, it’s the asana practice.  The moving in order to find my stillness.  The ability to step back and see what my body can do without becoming so enamored of it that I can no longer do it.  The trust to something bigger than myself that holds my body upright even as I tire, that allows my heart to reach out to the energy in the room, that leaves me eager, at the end of class, to share my peace with strangers that I meet off my mat in the hopes of spreading some peace in the world.

I think of it a bit like cotton candy:  The second you try to touch that frothy stuff it dissolves, leaving behind a sweetness without shape.

Okay, cotton candy is too sweet and it leaves that sticky residue on your cheeks and the stray strands of hair that got in the way as you ate and there’s probably a reason most of us haven’t had any in a good thirty years.  But maybe the analogy is made even more apt when we recall what was so magical about cotton candy when we were five years old and not yet annoyed by the cloying sweetness and the left over sticky patches that collected grime on our faces and hands.

The difference between the child charmed and thrilled by a big fluff of colored sugar whipped around a flimsy white paper cone and the preteen, teenager, adult sickened by the very idea of blue sugar grains coating her teeth can be seen as the difference between a person willing to surrender to the wonder of the now and the cynic who collapses the now into the might-come-next.  Between the person sitting quietly in a place of refuge and the person rushing through life creating structures and tasks that allow her to continue rushing through life without pausing to experience stillness.

Cotton candy analogy aside, what I think I’m trying to say is that this refuge concept is deceptively difficult to put into words, to express in ways our minds can grasp.  Which is perhaps part of what makes it so beautiful when you find it.  It doesn’t matter if ten other people have already said their family is their refuge because that word means something different to each of us.  It doesn’t matter whether I could adequately explain what it meant to me or whether anyone approved of my performance or remembered it later or understood who I am or what I was doing there.

What matters is that I had the experience of simply knowing, without words or explanation or the desire to explain, what my refuge is.  And that I had the experience of trusting in that refuge — of finally, fully seeing how I can be myself without anyone asking me to be anything else.

Virabhadrasana II (Warrior Two) — Strong, Open, and Fully Yourself

I have chosen to offer Virabhadrasana II here primarily because it is such a strong asana and such an open one.  The Warrior poses are expressions of pride — not the kind that comes before a fall, but the kind that allows us to be as fully strong as we know we are without having to either apologize or advertise.  There is so much to think about in the pose, so much to keep our minds occupied, that we truly are distracted from being too outside ourselves, too conscious of how we look to others.  In its very difficulty, Virabhadrasana II makes it possible for us to be authentic.

It is also an asana of an open heart.  Our arms spread wide, as if embracing anything that might come our way.  Our hearts center us in the present moment — suspended between future (forward hand and foot) and past (rear hand and foot) with our bodies centered right around our hearts.  The more we let our hearts lift us, the more we release our minds, the tensions from our shoulders, the heaviness in our guts, the easier the pose becomes.  And the more energy we send out into the room to help carry those around us in their poses.

And, finally, Virabhadrasana II is an asana of beauty.  If each of us believes in that beauty as we practice it, we experience the beauty within.  The kind that comes from letting go of others’ expectations and finding our own, perfect refuge.

Virabhadrasana II Instructions

Tagged as: meditation space, refuge, WriteMind Institute, yoga and motherhood